We at Frogfoot love technology, we love Open Source, we love doing things properly, we love a lot. But there are things that make us cry. Microsoft is responsible for a lot of those things, with my personal tears being shed specifically for Internet Explorer 6. It takes all the good vibes we try and collect and kills them like a rainbow unicorn drowning in quick sand. (You get the point right?)

Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001, almost 8 years ago. It has its own psychopathic way of deciding how to render HTML (the “program code” behind how websites look) which drives all web developers nuts, it doesn’t support transparent PNGs (an image format newer and better than GIF) and is also slow and insecure, probably responsible for most of the viruses and spyware that’s lurking in the world today.

For all the tears I have shed for Internet Explorer 6 there is a blanky of love and security that is Firefox.

Firefox is the Open Source poster child. Many of you might remember a company called Netscape. Back in the day (the wild west 90s) Netscape made a web browser called Netscape Navigator. It was the web browser and dominated 90% of the market share in the early 90s. Then Microsoft came along and in 1995 started bundling Internet Explorer as part of its Windows 95 Plus Pack.

Thus began the browser wars. A small software company against the ruthless giant of Microsoft, willing to do anything to get its way. Both companies released feature after feature, trying to outdo each other. Ultimately it was Microsoft’s decision to bundle all its successive operating systems with Internet Explorer than rung the death knoll for Netscape… it was just too hard for a small dedicated company to compete against a relatively good (for that time) web browser that was already on people’s computers. By 2005 Netscape’s dominant 90% had dropped to less than 1%.

Though Netscape took Microsoft to court, labelling their “bundling” practice as anti-competitive, and ultimately winning various antitrust court cases, Netscape was never going to rise again. But its ashes were only smouldering… and we all know what rises from the ashes. Foxes?

Eric S Raymond is a hippie. He’s possibly the biggest hippie in the Open Source, Free (as in freedom) Software world. He is also a right wing fundamentalist nut. But we love him like we love our eccentric uncle who runs the orphanage and feeds the poor. He is such a big influence that his books are viewed by some as the “sacred texts” of Open Source.

One book in particular is held as being the cornerstone of “why-open-source-works”. “The Cathedral and the Bazaar“, published in 1997 was so ground breaking with its theories that it could be compared to someone saying “The world is not flat” in a world where everyone still believed it was. In this book ESR explains how hundreds (thousands even) of workers, working together (in their spare time) towards a common goal can produce something as brilliant and robust as a cathedral, faster than the so-called “real builders”… and how the idea of the source code being free, and available to everyone, would be enough of a motivation for people to get involved.

In 1998 while the ashes of Netscape were busy smouldering the big wigs in the company were reading Eric’s book. In something akin to the last scene in the action movie where the dying hero fires a single (silver) bullet at a leaking gas tank causing a huge fireball and killing the evil villain, the Netscape bosses decided to release all their source code to the world, to peruse and improve.

The resulting project was called Phoenix… but there was another company called Phoenix so they called it Firebird… but there was another project called Firebird so eventually the settled on Firefox. All of this happened under the umbrella of an organisation called “Mozilla”.

Which brings us back to why Internet Explorer 6 is so incredibly rubbish. Remember how Netscape died, leaving Internet Explorer as the king of the hill? Well, since they were the undisputed king of the hill Microsoft decided that the web browser didn’t need to improve, and since they’d been funding the war for so long, and had now won, but had also set the precedent that the browser was a “free” application there was no reason to improve it (even just a face lift) because they wouldn’t be able to make any money out of it. Well, from 2001 till late 2006 Microsoft rested on it’s laurels with Internet Explorer 6. There was no competition so no reason to improve their ageing, insecure, steaming pile of, erm, software.

Simultaneously though, the Firefox project was gaining momentum. In 2002 the open source project, run almost entirely by volunteers, had released their first version (this was back in the Phoenix days). Mozilla Firefox slowly captured the hearts and minds of the people and slowly but surely, more and more people converted.

Eventually something woke the sleeping giant (Microsoft). Perhaps it was when Forbes magazine called Firefox the best browser in 2004, or when PC World named it their “Product of the Year” in 2005. Or perhaps it was when various foreign governments suggested that Internet Explorer 6 was insecure and that government employees should switch to Firefox.

Firefox now enjoys a healthy global market share which, depending on who you ask, ranges anywhere between 15% to 25%. Certain European countries (especially those who love Open Source) have percentages over 50%. And proof that our customers are intelligent, educated individuals is that on this website, over 70% of the people visiting are using Firefox.

And then of course there are the geeks. If you know someone who calls themselves a geek but doesn’t run Firefox (or one of its derivatives) they are probably not geeks. Geeks love Firefox… Geeks paid for a double page spread in the New York Times to advertise Firefox. Geeks love their friends and families so much that they install Firefox on their computers and hide the Internet Explorer menu items (you can’t uninstall Internet Explorer, it is *that* evil)

At the end of 2006 Microsoft finally released it’s competitor into the ring. Internet Explorer 7 is better than Internet Explorer 6, but it is still a snot-nosed kid when compared to the awesomeness that is Firefox.

So, what’s this about tough love? Well, if you’re still running Internet Explorer 6; an 8 year old web browser, complete with insecurity, bad adherence to standards and crappy PNG support, and you visit our website, you get a nice little badge, suggesting that your life might be better if you were to upgrade your web browser. Our site looks a little Junk in IE6 because we use this newfangled image format called PNG, which was released in 1996 and whose implementation Microsoft repeatedly messed up until 10 years later with Internet Explorer 7.

And even if you are running Internet Explorer 7 you’ll be interested to know that in 2006 PC World compared Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox and concluded that Firefox was still a better browser. A bunch of part time open source hippies made a browser that was better, faster and more secure than anything Microsoft could do. Makes you smile doesn’t it?

We sincerely hope you’ll give Firefox a try. We guarantee you won’t go back!